


Lay Me Down in Streetlight

by okaynowkiss



Series: Streetlight 'Verse [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hipsters, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Some hurt/comfort, i.e. steve getting beaten up, minor underage drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:32:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynowkiss/pseuds/okaynowkiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sure, Steve knows Bucky Barnes. They had a class together last semester. They're kind of friends now. It's not a big deal. It's not like Bucky fits into an empty place in Steve's heart that Steve didn't even know existed. It's very casual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Me Down in Streetlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xmoyashiii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xmoyashiii/gifts).



> I'm so happy I got this prompt, because parts of this story jumped into my mind as soon as I read it. I hope you like it, xmoyashiii!

The thing is, he wasn’t even going to get involved at all.

It was around the side of the dining hall, in the sad field between the hall and the edge of the woods, dotted with picnic tables mostly abandoned in the November chill. It was overcast; gray and bright out. Maybe a storm later. The girl was eating with her friend and her friend scampered off to class while the girl finished packing up her things, no rush. And then the girl dropped her trash off in a bin near the back door of the dining hall, where the two dudes were leaning against the brick wall and smoking. Her head was down in her phone; she didn’t look up at them.

Red hoodie said something to her; her head lifted because she heard it but she didn’t look back and kept walking away because presumably she didn’t like what she heard; and then the guys laughed to each other.

And Steve wasn’t going to do anything! Why would he? She was already walking away. She didn’t need help. ...But then the other guy, gray knit cap, grabbed her sleeve from behind. It was a tug, he would probably say, to get her attention. She turned and Steve was already standing up from his seat under the tree where he’d been having lunch, so it was easy to see the way the girl took an involuntary step away from the two of them once she saw them. And just as easy to see gray knit cap take a step forward, hands shoved in his pockets like he was all _harmless_ and like it wasn’t threatening _at all_ for these two probably-fifth-year seniors to just be advancing on this girl in a deserted area—

So anyway, Steve’s saying, “Hey,” and putting himself slightly in front of the girl before he can even articulate why the switch has been flipped.

The guys glance at each other, faces already indignant with _what the hell?_

Steve looks to the girl, who’s taken another step back and has her hands on her backpack straps real tight, and says, “Do you know them?”

She shakes her head. Looks embarrassed and sorry, and he wants to tell her not to look that way, it’s not her fault, but you can’t do everything, and right now he’s probably about to throw a punch and then get hit for about thirty seconds (which is going to feel a lot longer). So the girl ducks away and just walks off, fast, head down, and he feels—not guilty, but sad over it. Doesn’t matter, though. He did what he meant to do, because now it’s him that gray cap is saying “What’s your problem?” to, and not her.

Steve shrugs, then squares his shoulders. “Nothing. Just didn’t look like she wanted to talk to you.”

“How the fuck do you know what she wanted.” Red hoodie is definitely scarier and tougher than his friend. That’s clear now. Not that it matters much at this point.

“Educated guess,” Steve says.

Gray knit hat glances around behind Steve and seems to approve of what he sees, because he shoves Steve hard in the chest. All Steve sees behind the idiots is the looming windowless back of the dining hall, its metal door shut tight. He’s not going to give them the satisfaction of looking over his shoulder to check for anyone who might stop this or help him. He doesn’t particularly want help, anyway.

What he wants is to hit gray hat in the face _once_ , for being a bully, for being a stupid lackey to someone as dumb and shitty as red hoodie. So he does. And it’s pretty fast and it’s not the first or the tenth time he’s hit someone, so it connects solidly, with a sound like _pop_ , the guy shouting and reeling back.

Red hoodie tackles him pretty fast after that, and Steve’s tiny and built like a sapling, so he’s on the ground before he really knows what’s happening, and they’re both a lot bigger than he is so it’s not that hard for the one to just pin down his legs while the other kicks at wherever Steve can’t shield himself with his arms.

His whole body is singing with the pain, sharp-edged, taut. He just _can’t_ get his legs free, it’s no good, he’s struggling around on the gravel, hip and knees digging into it—amid the grunts of whoever is kicking him (he’s lost track), Steve hear’s a high-pitched sound escape from his own mouth.

And then from right next to them, a new voice shouts, “Hey!,” angry, and the weight on his legs is gone.

He scrambles up to sitting instinctively, despite the bruises, and watches with big eyes as this _boy_ who’s come out of nowhere shouts in the face of the guy whose gray hat is now lying in the grass.

Red hoodie is done with this scene, pulls his friend’s arm to get him to leave, but formerly-gray hat’s still in it, locked into the fight, and he _clocks_ the new boy.

Steve shoves himself off the ground, incensed _again_ , at which red hoodie openly rolls his eyes. “Jesus Christ,” the guy mutters, and drags his friend off bodily. Steve doesn’t watch them go. Instead he stands dumbly and stares at the boy, who’s still doubled over from the hit. The boy inhales sharply and stands, hand to his jaw, and his eyes meet Steve’s.

They blink at each other for a second in the unnatural calm.

And then: “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

Steve keeps blinking at him for longer than is strictly necessary. “Um. Are you okay?”

The boy softens a little, finally drops his shoulders out of fight mode and sighs. He lets his hand fall to his side, away from the red mark on his face. “I’m fine.” His name is Bucky Barnes; Steve’s met him before and he knew that pretty much as soon as he saw him today. They had a class together Steve’s sophomore year, Russian History.

Bucky takes a step closer and lifts a hand like he doesn’t even know where to touch Steve that won’t hurt him. “Come on,” he says, and grips Steve’s forearm, as though for some reason Steve might just _fall_ over at this point.

Okay, so he stumbles a little, through the crunchy brown leaves, on the walk to the nearest picnic table: he’s dizzy and his legs feel like jelly. Bucky’s grip doesn’t waver.

Bucky sits him down on the picnic bench and drops himself onto the other end of it, elbows back on the table, looking critically at Steve. “Are you going to pass out? How bad are you hurt?”

“I’m okay.” Steve looks down and touches his side experimentally. It’s tender, but nothing’s broken, probably. “You pulled him off me?”

Bucky nods, mouth twisted in sympathy. “I was way across the field. I ran as fast as I could, but. It happened really fast.”

He sounds apologetic, so Steve says, “That’s okay. You didn’t have to do that.”

Bucky shakes his head and looks off across the field for a minute. “Like I said, what’s wrong with you? Those guys were huge. I can’t believe you _punched_ the one!”

“They were, like, approaching that girl.”

Bucky starts to stay something and then stops himself. “Anyway. I can walk you over to the Health Center.”

“Nah,” Steve sniffs, “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, the way your face is bleeding and you can’t sit up straight are good signs, I think.”

Steve shifts and sits up a little straighter, ignoring the fresh surge of pain. “Look. I kind of, technically, have two strikes for fighting already—even though they were both _unavoidable—”_

Bucky looks skyward instead of taking the bait on that one.

“And if anybody from the dean’s office hears about this, I’ll get expelled,” Steve finishes in a rush. He wants to sound like he doesn’t care, just doesn’t want to deal with the hassle, but he knows he didn’t quite achieve nonchalance there. Whatever. Whatever! He’s not here to impress Bucky Barnes. (Good thing, too, because a few minutes ago he was balled up on the ground getting the shit kicked out of him by two assholes and nearly crying, so. Probably nobody is impressed. Steve isn’t.)

“Come on. It’s not like I’m taking you to Campus Safety. We’ll say you nosedived playing soccer and I fell on you.”

“No one’s gonna believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter. As long as the doctor doesn’t think you’re, like, a victim of domestic violence, they’re not going to report it to anyone. You look like you got into a fight. They’ll be glad you went at all, I swear.”

Steve’s face and side are hurting more as the adrenaline wears off, and Bucky’s eyes are big with worry, so Steve says, “Okay, I guess.”

Bucky breaks into a smile. “Yeah! Okay, here,” he says, jumping up and offering Steve a hand.

They walk across the field, Steve mostly waving off help. Halfway there Steve thinks to clear his throat and say, “I’m Steve, by the way.”

Bucky looks at him slantwise. “Steve Rogers. I _know_. We had History together last year.”

“Oh.” Yep, Steve is well aware, he even remembers the jacket Bucky favored at the time and when halfway through the semester he cut his hair. “Yeah, I. Bucky, right?”

“Yeah.” Now Bucky looks slyly amused, which is somehow worse than when he was annoyed a second ago. It’s more _worrying_ , at least.

Steve gets patched up and told he’s not bleeding internally, Bucky gets an ice pack, and they even walk back to their dorm together.

They part on the first floor, Bucky’s room being down at the end of the hallway and Steve’s up two floors. “See you around,” Bucky says, and winces sympathetically at the way Steve’s limping. “Maybe I should just walk you—”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Steve says, exasperated, and knows it’s too harsh as soon as it’s out of his mouth. “Honestly. Sorry. I’m fine. I’ll see you around.” He has to turn and leave.

Pathetically, he has to use the banister to pull himself up the stairs. Everything hurts, especially the fact that he knows with a depressing certainty that he is not going to see Bucky around.

This whole episode has reminded him of the stupid thing he’d had for Bucky back in that History class. Bucky wasn’t exactly his type, but he wasn’t any of things Steve really hated: cruel, or stupid, or weak. He was too good-looking, though, the type of boy who’s been popular his whole life, who’s gotten a tan every summer. And he’s self-consciously hip, too: his jeans are too tight and his hoodie’s too small and why won’t he just get his hair cut, already?

Steve wears his clothes slim, too, and he knows everyone thinks he’s kind of a hipster. He wears combat boots and his dad’s old leather jacket a lot of the time, because if anything he’s going for more of a punk thing. But really, it’s because he’s so skinny he looks like he’s swimming in anything with any extra room, so he has no choice but to buy tight clothes.

...Bucky probably isn’t into boys, is another thing.

Anyway, it’s all moot, because Steve has gone five semesters at school with the minimal required social life. He lived with his now-friend Sam Wilson freshman year, which turned out to be in one of the top five luckiest things that’s ever happened to him. The two of them are still tight. But that’s like... it. So it’s really not like he’s going to start “seeing Bucky around.”

 

+

 

He’s in a corner of the dining hall taking up two seats at an empty table, with a tray of food at one setting and an open book and notebook at the next, engrossed in the book and ignoring the food, the next time Steve sees Bucky.

Steve’s face is mostly healed and the bruise on his side has turned some interesting colors and only today started to ache less. It’s a week since the fight.

“Hey,” Bucky says, sliding from out of nowhere into a seat opposite Steve. He’s got no food with him; it’s nearly the end of dinner service so he probably already finished. Steve didn’t spot him today, but Bucky usually sits with a few of his friends, the red-haired girl most noticeably, when he comes to the dining hall. Not that Steve looks for him.

“Hi,” Steve says, after slightly too long a pause of just blinking at him. But Bucky just smiles back like it’s normal and like he’s pleased to see him, like he’s not annoyed about the other day.

Bucky doesn’t mention it, but Steve sees him check the cut-up part of Steve’s face.

Bucky’s in a hoodie over a plaid flannel button-up; he looks rumpled and warm and sweet. Something about seeing him makes Steve go shy, like he wants to just sit quietly and look at Bucky for a long time. It is partially the urge to draw him, maybe, because he’s found himself sketching the line of Bucky’s jaw without meaning to over the last few days—an unconscious streak on the edge of a piece of paper, quickly jotted over with something else to hide it. But also Steve wants to not speak because he doesn’t want to scare Bucky away, like he’s a deer and Steve’s trying to—not _hunt_ him, but photograph him, or something?

It’s confusing.

Bucky glances at something off to the side, then says, “Are you busy on Thursday night?” He leans on his forearms on the table a bit, tilted toward Steve.

“No, I’m not doing anything. What’s up?”

“Um. Would you want to come see Sleater-Kinney? With me and some of my friends?”

“Oh.” Steve’s brow furrows. “Yeah, I—love them, actually.”

“Yeah! You wore their shirt all the time last year,” Bucky says.

“Not... _all_ the time.”

“...Frequently,” Bucky allows.

“Yeah, to be honest that class was early, and that was the shirt I slept in, so I usually just...” Steve laughs when Bucky does.

Bucky looks back to the side and this time Steve follows his narrow-eyed glance to see the red-haired girl walking over, backpack in hand, hair swinging in sheets to her shoulders. “Hi,” she says, standing at the head of the table like she’s conducting a meeting to the two of them.

“Ready to go?” Buck says to her hopefully and too quick, oddly upbeat like he’s trying to get her out of there.

“Sure,” she says, and then completely blanks him to put 100% of her attention on Steve. It’s half terrifying, half exhilarating. “I’m Natasha. Are you coming on Thursday?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Steve says. “Only, I do have to be back kind of early. Are you taking the train?”

“No, I’m driving. It’s not in New York; that one was sold out so we got tickets to the Victoria Theater one.”

“Oh, cool. Okay. Just, I probably can’t if you’re going out afterward, I guess.” He’s got a shift at the photography lab on Thursday night, overnight, starting at midnight. It’s a weird job that pays okay and that he loves.

“We’re not,” says Natasha. “I never skip my early Friday class, so.”

“Yeah?” Steve glances at Bucky. “Okay, so. Cool.”

“Cool,” Natasha says, and smiles with half her mouth in a way Steve finds charming and mysterious despite himself.

“Anyway,” Bucky says, and pushes his chair back. “I’ll talk to you.” He’s already putting himself between Natasha and the table, kind of guiding her backward without touching her. He gives Steve a little wave, elbow at his hip and just his hand moving, that Steve is too stunned to return, so the last thing Bucky sees of him is probably Steve looking at him open-mouthed.

Steve tries to go back to reading, but he gives up after a few minutes. Are he and Bucky friends now? Is that what’s happening? Does Bucky feel any of this tension that Steve does, or—?

 

+

 

The only time anyone really knocks at Steve and Brock’s door is when one of them is in trouble, so he’s wary and also annoyed when the sound wakes him up on Thursday morning. Brock’s out, it looks like, based on what Steve can see while peering out from under his pillow, so Steve gets up and answers.

“Jeez, what happened to you?” is how Bucky greets him.

“What?” Steve says, pulling a face.

“It’s, like, noon, on a Thursday, if you were wondering.”

“I was working until six,” Steve says, rubbing his eye. “Dick,” he adds for good measure, standing aside to let Bucky in.

Bucky takes in the room: Steve’s unmade bed, the drawing supplies across the desk, the standing easel and the closed curtains. “You still want to come tonight?”

“Yeah,” Steve says at once. He hadn’t quite worked out a way to contact Bucky over the last few days and find out the details of their plans, and that time in the dining hall was the only time they talked about it. It’s a good thing Bucky is more reliable and less… weird than Steve. “What time did you guys want to leave?”

“Seven-thirty, I think. We don’t care about the opening bands but we’ll just—“ Bucky waves a hand vaguely— “hang around and drink at the place before they go on.”

“Okay, cool. I’m—still twenty, and I don’t have a fake ID or anything, but I don’t mind seeing bands I don’t know, so.”

“Oh, it’s cool, we usually just sneak in whiskey anyway, so we don’t have to buy drinks at the bar.”

Something hopeful and a little sad shoots through Steve then, as he looks at Bucky with his head tilted. It’s like he’s finally allowed to see all this stuff up close, Bucky’s wavy chestnut hair and his wide blue eyes, friendships so well-worn that you have routines together, and he doesn’t have to distance himself from it because now he’s going to get to hang out and have fun with Bucky and his friends. Where have they been this whole time, Steve’s whole school career? Is it really this easy to make friends, and Steve just… never… did it?

Also, he wasn't sure the other times, but today in the intimacy of his room it's obvious: the air between them is charged, shimmering and alive with possibility. Does Bucky know too? Or is it... too far out of the realm of possibility for him? He's perceptive, and he likes Steve at least a little or he wouldn't have done all this, so probably he knows, at least.

Still, it might be nothing. Bucky might have someone. He and Natasha are more than friends, or were at some point.

"Here," Bucky says, "give me your number."

Steve tells him and Bucky enters it deftly into his phone, and then Steve's phone rings once on his desk. "So now you have mine," Bucky says. "Come down to my room around 7, if you want, and we can leave from there. We're the big suite on the first floor, 110. Or you can text me." 

"Yeah, okay. See you later."

Steve closes the door behind him, then leans his forehead against the doorframe. All this unsolicited niceness.

He curls up under the covers and tries to fall back asleep, but it’s no good. He flops onto his back and throws an arm over his eyes to block the midday sun getting in even though the curtains are closed. In the warm cocoon of the blankets his mind keeps wandering to Bucky.

There’s something about him that makes things easy in a way Steve isn’t used to. It’s easy to talk to him, easy to be around him; he’s magnetic.

It occurs to Steve that he might be mistaking Bucky’s natural charm for a spark between them.

He’s got not much to compare this to. Steve doesn’t really do relationships, doesn’t look for them or want them, and his hook-up history is kind of checkered. Some one-night stand type things at school, some more back in Brooklyn. But sometimes with the same person multiple times, so that’s... something.

Steve knows that he makes himself kind of unapproachable. Holds himself apart. And that’s at least some of the reason that no one is exactly knocking down the door to go out with him. But he doesn’t know how to quit it, if he even wants to.

And where is this all _coming_ from? He’s got, maybe, a crush on Bucky. He’s not _in love_ with him. He wants to press Bucky down into the sheets of the private dorm room Steve imagines he has, get his hands on him, kiss him until his laughing eyes go serious and dark. But that’s it, probably. It’s not serious.

 

+

 

That night he dresses to get stepped and spilled on, even though there's not going to be like, moshing. Least favorite leather boots, jeans that haven't been washed this week. Still the leather jacket, though, because why have it if you're not going to wear it to concerts? This is what it was made for. Maybe it’s what his dad would want him to do with it, if his dad knew Steve had the jacket, or remembered that Steve existed. He barely remembers his dad and doesn’t think of him much.

Sometimes, he doesn’t know if he’s wearing the jacket out of spite or out of love for the guy.

He fixes his hair in the mirror, just dried from the shower. It’s as good as it’s going to get. And then there's nothing else to do. It's 7:15, he should go down to Bucky's room. Or he could just text him and check.

 **Hey what's your room number again?** Steve texts, because he’s a fucking coward.

Bucky's room number is 110; he even knows exactly where that is because the 10’s on every floor are at the far end of the hall, and they're all bigger than the standard doubles in the rest of the building. 

It's a few minutes before Bucky texts back: **110**.

Steve sees this because he's holding his phone and waiting for it when it comes in, and it's stupid to expect the text to be more personal. It's clearly stupid, because Bucky's been so unnecessarily friendly to him in person and why does he have to keep proving that he's decent? Steve should believe it already, and he’s a dick because he doesn't, quite.

He's tapping his phone against his lip, psyching himself up, when the phone vibrates again: another text. **Come down now! There's prega ugh**

A second later, while Steve's still looking at the screen: ***pregaming**. A smile creeps onto Steve’s face.

Then: **I'm not drunk**.

Steve grabs his wallet and his keys and can't keep the smile off his face. He bounces down the three flights of stairs to Bucky’s floor and finds room 110, which is propped open with what looks like a piece of a vacuum cleaner. Voices from inside spill out into the hallway. Steve knocks while pushing open the door and peers into the suite. People are sitting around a common area with a couch and chairs crowded around a small TV, watching two boys Steve doesn’t know play a video game, and at the back of the room there’s a little _kitchen_. A fridge and sink and cabinets. God, Steve’s room that he shares with someone is the size of a child’s single bedroom, and some people live in _these_?

Bucky’s head appears over the back of the couch, craning to see Steve. “Hey!” he says, and hops over the couch back to come greet Steve. He claps their hands together, holds onto Steve’s for a second between them and just grinning at him, and Steve is fucked. He’s completely fucked. It’s like the lights are on for the first time, that’s how bright and lovely Bucky is.

Bucky maybe blushes a little or maybe is slightly drunk after all, because his cheeks are pink as he turns back to the room and motions Steve over to the little kitchen.

"Here, do you want a drink?"

"How soon are we leaving?" Steve asks, looking around the place. There’s a little hall of bedroom doors off to the side.

"Pretty soon. Nat hasn't texted that she's leaving yet, so, we have a few minutes to kill."

"Okay, sure."

Bucky pulls two Lionsheads out of the fridge and hands one to Steve. He twists the cap off his own and takes a sip. Without warning the boys in the living room erupt into loud groans and shouts of dismay—all except one of them, who crows triumphantly and jumps up to punch the air.

"Bullshit," one of the upset ones pronounces, coming into the kitchen to grab his own beer. 

"Steve, Jim. Jim, Steve."

Jim's beer makes a _sshh_ sound as it cracks open. "How's it going?"

"Hey, what's up?"

"Steve with the...?" Jim mimes punching Bucky's cheek, and raises his eyebrows.

"He didn't punch me," Bucky clarifies, making a face. 

"Right, but you know."

"Yeah, that was me," Steve agrees.

"Don't look so happy about it," Bucky says, but he's a little pleased too, mischief in his eyes. Steve didn't think to ask if Bucky'd ever been hit before, his own life being such a parade of bullies and fists. But probably he hasn't. Probably it was a little bit exciting.

Bucky introduces Steve to his other four (four!) roommates; they're all funny and they all rib Steve and Bucky over the fight. It sounds like it was a big topic around the suite these last few weeks. It's funny, Steve's only ever seen Bucky hanging out with the hipster crowd; he wouldn't have guessed about this other side to him. These guys are all bros, potentially even jocks. They’re not in frats or they’d live in the frat houses, but it’s about one level away.

"We were all on the wrestling team together our first few years," Bucky explains. 

The others, standing around the kitchen and drinking with them, agree. "No choice but to become friends, with that level of grappling," says the French one.

"I didn't even know we had a wrestling team," says Steve.

"Yeah, well," Dugan smiles at him. "We weren't the best. Or in the top half of our circuit. Or the top ninety percent."

But Steve didn't mean it that way: it was a joke on himself, how little he knows about athletics at Northern. No one's acting offended, but they've just met him. "I just meant—"

But then Bucky's grabbing his arm and leading him toward the door. "That's Nat," he says, holding up his phone. "Ready?"

The others chorus goodbye to them, already shoving one another and going back to trash talking about the video game before they're out the door.

"I didn't know you lived with all of them," Steve says as they climb down the stairs together.

"Yeah, all four years, actually. We didn't know each other freshman year, but we all got along when they placed us together. They're really good to live with."

Steve follows him out the heavy side door into the building's parking lot, Bucky bounding and happy, looking at Steve every few steps and turning his body toward him as they walk. Steve feels safely pulled along, and it makes him happy to follow Bucky's lead, because he likes Bucky in a pure sort of way he hasn't liked a new person in a long time. Since Sam, maybe. 

 

+

 

Steve and Bucky slide into the backseat. It's Natasha driving and in the passenger seat a boy Steve's seen around, sandy-haired and loose-limbed. "Get your feet off my dash," Nat's saying as Steve and Bucky climb into the backseat.

"Come on," the boy says, but takes down his legs.

Natasha twists around in her seat. "Hey! What's up?"

Bucky holds out a hand, palm up, for her to slap. "What's up, girl?" Bucky greets her. "Steve, do you know Clint?"

"No, hey." Steve smiles at him.

Clint turns around and sticks out a hand to him. Steve shakes it and he thinks maybe he was supposed to just high five him, but it's over quickly and the air isn't weird afterward. "Bucky said you're an Art major?" Clint asks.

"Yeah, I'm doing digital illustration."

"My friend Kate is, too. You probably don't know her, she's a freshman, but she's cool."

It's only by the weirdest coincidence that Steve does know her, but it's lucky, because it makes him feel like way less of a fraud. Like maybe he really is a normal student and not a loser who goes home to his mom’s most weekends. (He _does_ do that, but maybe he’s also normal, friendship material.) "Kate Bishop?" Steve asks, and Clint nods. "Yeah, I don't know her really, but she was at the department mixer and she said something really funny after they made her get up and talk for the freshman class, so I remember her."

Natasha and Bucky catch up on whatever, gossip and mundane stuff, as Nat pulls the car out of the lot onto the road and Steve and Clint talk about Kate a little more.

"Okay, what do you want to listen to?" Natasha asks the car at large.

Clint perks up. "Is my CD still in here?"

Natasha says “Yeah,” and in her mouth the word has three syllables. “It’s actually the only CD I’ve ever had, so it’s still in here.”

He presses buttons on the stereo until it ejects the disc. "Well, clearly we’re listening to this," he says.

“Mm,” Natasha says. “Let’s let Steve decide.”

“I don’t care, whatever you—”

“Top forty pop, yay or nay?” Natasha asks him over his objections.

Steve scrunches up his nose. “Well, it really depends.”

“Ha!” Natasha crows. “I knew you’d be a snob.”

“ _You’re_ a snob,” Bucky tells her.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m glad there’s another.”

Clint peers over the shoulder of his seat at Steve. “It’s just ‘Call Me Maybe’—”

“Twice on one CD—” Natasha interrupts.

“It’s not like, Maroon Five or something,” Clint grumbles, turning back around.

Steve knows he really does get to choose, so why not? “I _like_ ‘Call Me Maybe.’”

There’s booing from Bucky and Nat’s side, but Clint is pleased, and all of them sing along to it.

 

+

 

It’s between sets when they get in. The floor not half filled yet, people milling around in groups, a rock playlist quiet enough to talk over through the club's speakers. The four of them find a place to stand in a back corner and circle up, chatting and checking out the crowd. "Did you listen to the next band at all?" Bucky asks Steve.

"Nah, I was going to but I didn't get around to it. Did you?"

"A little. They're," Bucky shrugs, "okay."

"Let's go buy sodas," Natasha says to Clint. She points at Bucky and Steve, more of the question directed to Steve. "Steve? Do you want a drink?"

"Um."

Bucky says to Steve, "There will be whiskey in them eventually. If you want." And then to Natasha, "Coke I guess."

Steve nods. "Thanks. I'll have a coke too."

She and Clint drift off toward the bar, where there's already a substantial line, leaving Steve alone with Bucky. The silence between them lifts and holds tight, a bubble getting bigger and bigger and daring them to pop it. Steve scans the crowd instead of looking at Bucky, takes in all the tight jeans and sees how many leather jackets he can spot from here. His is the coolest one, although there’s a pretty good fringey one on an unapproachably cool girl.

“So,” Bucky says after a few minutes, “Nat said she was impressed I got you to agree to come out.” He says it like he’s telling a joke, sly, but warning bells are going off in Steve’s head.

 _Don’t_ , Steve thinks at him so hard he’s surprised Bucky can’t hear it. _Don’t bring it up, don’t make this bad when it’s so nice._ But Bucky’s face is still clear, honest and kind, so Steve says, “Why?,” careful.

Bucky shrugs. “She’s friends with your friend Sam Wilson, I think. Just, she said you don’t hang out that much.” He means ‘hang out’ in the general sense, with anyone. Go out, go to parties.

Steve looks away, over Bucky’s shoulder. His jaw works back and forth a few times. “I guess.”

“Just...” Bucky says, quietly. “I just meant, so why did you? Tonight.”

Steve looks back at him, surprised. Not making fun of Steve, not being mean. This is nothing like that. “I just wanted to,” Steve blurts out, too fast to lie. “I guess I _don’t_ hang out that much. Sam’s my best friend at school, but that’s it. I don’t know a lot of people.” Bucky nods through it. It’s way too serious, but Steve’s glad he said it.

“Well,” Bucky says, his eyes pinning Steve in place, “I’m glad I know you now.”

Steve closes his mouth. Doesn’t quite gulp. Natasha and Clint come back with the drinks then and there’s the surreptitious pouring of liquor (the bottle produced from somewhere on Bucky’s person, as if by magic) into all their cups.

The next band comes on. It’s another all-girl group, like Sleater-Kinney. They play fast and discordant and pretty fun, really. Steve’s cheeks heat up with the drink or the energy in the room, and once they all finish off their drinks the four of them make their way up into the standing crowd to get a better spot.

Steve ends up next to Clint, getting pushed into each other sometimes. When the band finishes, Steve claps and means it. The crowd goes even tighter around them in the space between sets as people push forward. Clint shakes Natasha by her shoulders at one point in restless energy and she scrunches up her nose. Bucky keeps leaning around them to talk to Steve, finally squeezing through the crowd to stand next to him, apologizing again and again to a girl he slightly stepped on. Steve laughs at him ungenerously, and Bucky shakes his head.

When the lights come up and the band goes on, Steve and his friends are close enough to see that Corin Tucker’s tights are navy blue, not black, and it’s all around one of the best shows Steve’s ever been to.

People dance more to one of the songs and the crowd shifts; Steve loses track of everyone and stays in place because he has a good view for the time being, which is lucky, because girls his height can wear high heels so he’s always at a disadvantage at shows.

When the song ends, Steve threads his way back toward where he lost everyone. He catches sight of the two of them at the base of a pillar: ethereal in the low light, Natasha’s hair backlit in a fiery halo, Bucky’s hand on her arm, his head bent down talking close to her ear. She laughs at something and touches his other arm, then stands on her tiptoes to tuck her cheek next to his and say something back. They look cute and proper together.

He turns away from them while he’s still safely in the crowd; walks slowly, dumbly, on his way to the other side of the room.

There’s no reason. It doesn’t matter what they were doing. He takes a few deep breaths. So what? So what? What did he think? That Bucky was suddenly going to... want to go out with him? It’s not that, really, but if Steve’s being honest he did think something was maybe going to happen between them tonight. Bucky is objectively popular, and even though it’s not like it’s high school—the university too big to be cliquey except in more political academic ways—clearly he was never really going to date Steve. But the possibility of something, of finding out what Bucky tastes like up close... that felt pretty real. It did until now, at least.

The band keeps playing and he loses everyone again for awhile. Clint comes and joins him and some point, and they watch together companionably, clapping and pointing out their favorite bits to each other. Once the lights come up, Steve follows Clint outside in the throng of people streaming out of the club. Clint holds up his phone to Steve. “Nat says they’re going back to the car too, we can meet them there.”

“Cool,” Steve agrees. On the sidewalk the night is cool and the crowd steams from the hot club. They pass under streetlight after streetlight, and Steve thinks to check what time it is on his own phone. It’s 11:20pm, he’ll probably be on time for his shift. Also he has two texts from Bucky, “Where you at,” an hour ago, and “Walking back to the car, meet you there?” a minute ago.

There’s a scattering of clouds, high in the night sky; they blow across the arc of the moon.

Steve glances at Clint out of the corner of his eye, both of them with their hands shoved in their jacket pockets. Clint is all right. He’s funny and most of his jokes are about himself. He doesn’t mind being quiet. In a different life Steve would like to be friends with him. “Can I ask you something?” Steve says.

Clint looks at him skeptically, but then he shrugs and says, “Sure.”

“Are you and Natasha... I mean, are you guys doing something?”

“Ah, well. Uh. I guess I don’t... really know?” Clint says, and then laughs at himself. “Why?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Good question. I don’t know, just wondering I guess.”

Clint nods and they keep walking. They lean against Nat’s car when they get to it, no one else there, feet on the curb and backs against the doors. “Might be time for me to get new shoes,” Clint says, since they’re both looking down. His are old Vans that look like they were blue once, worn thin and ripped in strange places. He lifts one foot up to the opposite knee and shows Steve where the sole is pulling away from the top of the shoe at the front. Steve shifts his feet in his boots and shows Clint where a buckle’s come apart from the body of the shoe.

Later, when Steve’s sitting in the photography lab alone under a florescent light, replaying the night, this’ll be his favorite part. Standing doing nothing with Clint on the street corner, looking at the holes in their shoes.

 

+

 

He's studying on a bench in the unseasonable warmth with Sam, books in their lap and hoodies zipped up. Footsteps jog toward them, light across the courtyard pavement, and stop in front of their bench. Sam and Steve both squint up into the sun to see Bucky smiling at them.

"Hey, what's up?" he greets them.  
  
They chorus "Hey man" and "Hi" at him. Bucky looks as artfully rumpled as ever: hair messy, sleeves pushed up past his elbows. Steve’s stomach does something funny, loops around with butterflies, and his heart feels like it’s kind of too big and kind of in his throat. It’s weird that he’s getting used to feeling like this when he sees (or honestly even thinks about) Bucky. Steve looks at him for half a second and thinks he’s probably been staring too long.

He hasn’t seen Bucky since the concert last week. They’d slept in the car on the way back, Natasha chiding them but happy about it when she dropped them off. And Bucky seemed surprised when Steve wasn’t walking into their dorm with him at the end of the night, instead going off to the Art building for his shift at the photo lab.  
  
Today, Bucky is wide awake, looking stir-crazy and caffeinated and happy. Bucky tips his jaw at the library, across the courtyard. "I saw you from the window. We're having a party on Friday night; you guys should come."

"At Nat's?" asks Sam.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, I told her I'd go. There's a rugby formal that night but we're always back by like 11."

"Cool. Nobody ever shows up before then anyway. I tell people to come over at 10, but." Bucky shrugs. "Steve, you’re coming too?" This is easy for Bucky, or at least he’s good at pretending it is. Probably it’s easy because it doesn’t mean anything.

Steve can already see the crowd of strangers, taste the thrum of disappointment in his mouth, in his imaginary version of their house which, in reality, he has yet to set foot in. But Bucky is in front of him, blazing and alive in the cold sunlight, bouncing on the balls of his feet, leaning sweet and hopeful toward Steve, and Steve has to smile a little and say, "Sure."

"Cool, so," Bucky raises his eyebrows, "like ten?"

Steve hooks an arm around the back of the bench. "I heard it's really lame before eleven. I'll come at like... twelve."

Sam laughs. "I'll text you if it’s good or not so you can decide."

"Yeah, yeah.” Bucky flips them off with both hands. “Whatever. If I'm passed out already it's your own faults.” Switching gears, he indicates Sam’s open textbook. “Is that the O-Chem homework?”

Sam pulls a face. “Yeah. You do it yet?”

“Yeah, I have a test tomorrow and I’ve gotta study tonight so I did that first. It’s not that bad, but there’s a ton of reading.”

“Man, I can’t wait to be done with this book.”

Steve goes back to his reading while they commiserate about their coursework. A minute later, Bucky’s voice changes to address the both of them again and he says, “All right, I’m going back in.” When Steve blinks up at him, Bucky is looking right at him. A charge shivers through the air when their eyes meet and the corner of Bucky’s mouth twitches up. Steve lifts his eyebrows at him, in a dare or a question. “See you guys later,” Bucky says. “And Friday, obviously. Okay.” He watches Steve a second longer, waves goodbye to both of them a final time, and jogs off back toward the library.

“You should come on Friday,” Sam says after a minute.

“Huh?” Steve pushes the hair out of his eyes and looks over at him. “Yeah, I said I would.”

“Their parties are weird,” Sam goes on, as though Steve didn’t say anything. “But they’re fun. That house they all live in is small, you know the one above the drug store? I don’t get why school even owns the property, but apparently it’s been there forever. Nobody knows it’s dorm rooms, so nobody else ever tries to get the rooms at housing lottery. This is their third year there.

“Anyway, they have these _dance_ parties sometimes. Like, not ones where people pair off, just everybody dancing in a big group in the kitchen. I mean, we’ve done it when there was like one girl there and eight dudes, so it’s definitely not about hooking up. They do all get _wasted_ , though, so _that’s_ normal. At any party, not just the dance parties.” He sounds far away and happy telling this story, and Steve is obscurely sad that he’s never been to any of these mythical parties in the special house that apparently everyone else knows about. Sam snaps back a little and says, “Anyway, they’re cool. For parties at this school, at least.”

Steve laughs. “Yeah, okay. It sounds... fun.”

“Damn, so it’s really this easy to get you to hang out?” Sam’s teasing voice is almost a relief. “I ask you to hang out and you’re like, _sure pal_. Get Bucky Barnes to ask you, and it’s just, _Oh okay, I’ll come to a party, no problem._ ” His Steve voice is high pitched, which isn’t really fair because if anything Steve’s voice is deeper than his.

“That’s a great impression, by the way,” Steve says primly, looking down at his book and flipping a page with more noise than is necessary.

“Hmm,” Sam says, and they study until the sun drops too low to keep them warm.

 

+

 

It’s ten-thirty on Friday night and you can hear the voices from the street, the distant chatter from inside the house. Laughter sounds, so clear in the night air that maybe there’s a porch or an open window around back. Steve is halfway up the stairway along the side of the drugstore when someone pushes the door open at the top and comes spilling out into the night, bringing the yellow light from inside with them.

“Sorry—” says the girl crashing into Steve.

“Hey, Steve!” The boy is Clint, and Steve hasn’t seen her in awhile but he’s pretty sure this is Kate Bishop, dark hair shining even when the door closes on the light.

“Hey, what’s up?” Steve greets them. “I’m Steve,” he tells Kate.

“Kate, and I know, sorry, it was just dark! We’ll be back in a few minutes, we’re going to the CVS for soda, do you want anything?”

“That’s okay,” he says, and slides past them up the thin stairway. “Is it—” he indicates the lock on the door.

“Oh, I think it’s open, it never really locks,” Clint says. He reaches up and pulls, successfully. “See you in a minute!” he calls, the two of them already bounding down the stairs. Steve holds the door a few inches ajar where Clint left it and watches the pair of them take off running down the street, shouting with laughter.

When Steve ducks inside, he doesn’t know anyone he sees. The hallway is crowded with kids leaning against the wall, drinking and leaning close to talk. He makes his way around them and looks into the first open door: someone’s room, a double. Bunk beds, desks, a circle of girls he doesn’t know sitting on the ground around a deck of cards.

On down the hallway, past two closed doors that look like they belong to people’s rooms and one that’s the girls’ bathroom. The hallway opens into the kitchen, which, it doesn’t seem possible anyone could ever dance in here despite what Sam said. Every available surface is stacked with boxes of food and bottles, and the dish drying rack overflows over two countertops. A half dozen people are in the small space, and something sparks like the strike of a match behind Steve’s ribs because he catches a glimpse of, maybe, there in the corner—. But he can’t tell, there’s a crowd in the way.

Two of the people are mixing what looks like a bucket of drinks. One of those two throws her head back and laughs, red hair swinging from her face. “Hey, Natasha,” Steve says, waving to get her attention.

“Oh! Hi!” She’s pink-cheeked in just a t-shirt in the warm crowd of people, and she smiles with more teeth than usual at him. She hugs him quickly, and asks, “Did you just get here?”

“Yeah, I just came in.” She’s already partly gotten distracted by whatever she was doing before he came in, the girl she’s with saying, “Oh shit, was that too much gin?” and Nat peering into the punch bowl.

“Well, whatever,” she says after a second. “Steve, Maria; Maria, Steve.” They say hi as Natasha ladles a drink into what looks like a cleaned-out yogurt container and then holds it out to Steve.

He takes it and then thinks to say, “What is it?”

“It’s a gin bucket,” Natasha says, unhelpfully.

“Well, it’s definitely gin,” says Maria, and fixes cups for herself and Natasha.

Nat holds hers up in invitation to Steve and Maria, and they all clink the plastic containers (they _are_ yogurt containers, so this group is granola as well as hipsters) as much as it’s possible for plastic containers to clink, and then take sips. It tastes like pink lemonade and alcohol, so, not terrible.

There are three people Steve doesn’t know who have been boisterously greeting each other in the middle of the kitchen floor since Steve walked in, and when they leave Steve becomes aware of the shape standing in the corner where the counters meet, talking to someone animatedly. The color of the hair and the height and the set of his shoulders; Steve caught a glimpse of him when he walked in the room but he wasn’t sure and he couldn’t get any closer to see, but he knows it’s Bucky and his face heats up with it once he’s sure. Has Bucky seen him yet? The guy in front of him is blocking his view of Steve.

Maria is saying something that Steve has missed most of, and it ends with, “You had that, right, Steve?” He’s got nothing, 100% of his attention is on Bucky even though he won’t let himself look over at him and he has just... no idea what this girl has said. It’s loud enough that it’s conceivable he just couldn’t hear her, at least.

He turns his ear a little toward her and says, “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you—?”

He catches it this time as she happily asks again about a studio art class that Steve did indeed take last year, and he even manages to answer her and make a joke. But the conversation is all on the surface: all he’s thinking about, all he’s aware of, is Bucky in the corner of the room, slouching and playful, drinking from a red cup. The air is tilted towards him. It aches in Steve’s chest, how aware of him he is. He blinks it away as much as he can, keeps it in the corner of his eye and no closer; Bucky’s talking to someone and so is he.

Natasha is being solicitous and sweet. She was nice at the concert but she’s naturally aloof, which Steve doesn’t mind because that’s him, too. But tonight, because of the gin bucket or the fact that they’re in her kitchen, she’s including Steve generously in all her jokes, apparently enjoying telling him why it’s so funny that the other assistant in Maria’s lab is this Phil guy. She’s fun to be around, like, actually. So Steve’s manages, after the initial rush of it, to mostly think about her and Maria as he talks to them, when, suddenly or finally, there’s a hand on Steve’s elbow.

Bucky steps in to join the circle of the three of them and says “Hey!” to Steve. It’s not been three days but somehow he’s so much lovelier than Steve remembers, the corners of his huge blue eyes crinkling up at the sight of Steve.

“Hi,” Steve says, with almost no sound. There’s loud music now, from somewhere, so it doesn’t matter that he can barely speak.

“Did you just get here?” Bucky asks him, echoing Natasha.

“Yeah, a minute ago,” he says, but it really is hard to hear now with the music.

Natasha extends a finger of the hand she’s using to hold her drink toward the ceiling. “Oh look, someone found the plug to his speakers,” she says, glib for reasons Steve can only guess at. Bucky rolls her eyes in amused solidarity and smiles privately at her. “Come on,” Natasha says to Maria, and they thread their way out of the room toward, Steve assumes, the stairway.

“Here,” Bucky says, and tips his head out of the room. He extends a hand back toward Steve and doesn’t hold his hand or grab his sleeve or anything, but—it’s close. It’s like he could. Steve follows as if he’s being towed along.

It’s much quieter in the hallway. The kitchen has to be right under whoever was playing that music. Bucky stops along the wall and puts a hand on Steve’s arm to guide him aside as a few people coming in from outside pass them.

Bucky looks him over, like he’s checking that Steve’s here and he’s okay. “So,” he says. And then he laughs at himself a little. “Thanks! For coming. I was wondering if you were gonna come. How’s it going?”

Bucky may be a little drunk, too. They’re standing close together in the hallway and there are people all around, but that only makes it more intimate. They’re not looking away from each other at all. “Yeah, it’s all right,” Steve says, trying not to smile too big and not sure why he’s trying not to.

The smell of sweet, heady smoke drifts through the hall from somewhere. Steve takes a sip of his drink, because he wants to do something with his hands. Bucky nods at the cup and asks him, "How is that?," amusement glinting in his eyes.

Steve tilts his head from side to side: _so so._ "Tastes like lemonade-flavored gin."

"Jesus," Bucky laughs. "Sounds dangerous. Feel free to switch to beer, the PBRs in the fridge are mine."

"Thanks."

"Or I mean, go wild, I want to see drunk Steve Rogers, so." Bucky is talking quietly and smiling like all this is a secret that they're making up as they go. Steve's head is spinning with it.

"I was drinking at Sleater-Kinney," he reminds Bucky, some pride from the fact that they shared that time and now they're sharing this one.

"I know, but no one got drunk that night. It was pretty subdued." Bucky's eyes on Steve are soft. "It was fun, though."

"Yeah," Steve says. "It was." It's been really fun hanging out with you lately, he wants to say. Let's keep doing it, he wants to say. I feel like if I look at your face I'm gonna go blind and if I look away I'm gonna die, he wants to say.

Instead of any of that, the outside door opens wide and kids stream in, loud enough that both of them look over. Bucky's roommates, Sam too: the rugby crowd plus their dates, still in rumpled formal clothes and drunker than everyone here. They beeline for Steve and Bucky and it's a blur of claps on the back and complicated nicknames thrown back and forth. It's even sort of fun, getting swept up in their excitement, Steve finds, laughing and wishing he had another drink when he tries to drink from his for the second time after knowing it's empty.

Steve hasn't seen this version of Sam since freshman year when they were roommates and Sam would come home from parties like this: in shirtsleeves and boisterous, talking with his hands, always wanting to have serious talks with Steve about The Big Stuff.

"Let's get a drink," he says to Steve tonight, hands on Steve's shoulders. Bucky is already being dragged that way with a backward glance at Steve,  some question Steve can't guess in his eyes. So Steve goes with Sam.

It's only a dozen or so more people at the party, but their arrival makes it seem about twice as big in the way that people who have already been at an organized party tend to do to a place.

Everything seems slightly unreal now, more like it's happening in a movie and Steve is just watching it all. He watches Sam pour the gin mixture into a cup for himself and ask Steve how it is. Steve watches himself answer: "Like lemonade-flavored gin.” It's not exactly a joke but it's the only line he can dig up. His mind won't cooperate, he's really only thinking of Bucky and how it seems like the part of the evening where they got to talk is over. It's just that now the party seems unwieldy, something big and precarious and barely balanced that’s about to crash to the floor.

Sam scrunches up his nose when he tastes the drink. "Okay, well," he says, and magics out of the air a beer, which he holds out to Steve.

It's cold in Steve's palm. It was being passed overhead to someone behind them, but it's a PBR, which Bucky offered to him anyway, so Steve doesn't feel too bad about taking it.

Things come back into focus. It's just Sam, his third or fourth favorite person in the whole world, and it's just a loud party. "You been out on the roof yet?" Sam asks him.

"Nope."

"Come on."

Bucky is in a loud and tightly circled conversation with all five of his roommates, so Steve might as well. He follows Sam. They climb out a window in the hallway onto a nearly flat stretch of shingled roof, looking out over the nondescript back lawn and into the trees beyond it, singing with wind. It's dark back here, not much streetlight making it around from the road. Three other people are already sitting out, their backs lit up by the window and their faces in shadow. Steve doesn't know them, they're younger maybe. Two girls and a boy.

He and Sam sit down facing the yard, leaned back against the house, and Steve cracks open his beer. It's refreshing after the gin, fizzy and not too sweet. "What happened to your date?" Steve asks Sam.

"I think they're all in Pepper's room. I hate showing up with this many people if we're not going to like, a frat, but all the guys wanted to come."

It sounds like an apology, and Steve feels guilty for wanting it to be. They're all Bucky's friends, of course they're at a party that he's... not hosting, but sort of hosting. It's just that Bucky has a lot of friends and Steve was just learning to keep up with the one group of them at a time.

"How was the dance?"

"It was... pretty drunk," Sam says, and they both laugh. “How’s it going?”

“It’s good. I hung out with Natasha at the show but she’s different here. I don’t know. I like her.”

Sam’s nodding. “She’s just like you, man, I was telling her before. You’ll like her, I mean, you guys will be tight.”

The night is cold and the wind cuts through his clothes but Steve could sit out here with Sam forever. He wishes suddenly, so forcefully that it knocks him back a little, that he hadn’t refused when Sam wanted them to live together this year. But Sam had a spot in the Honors house and it had seemed important to Steve to get him to take it. Steve had flatly refused, and they’d barely talked for a week afterward. Things are fine between them now, but Steve _misses_ him. No one is as good as Sam. Sophomore year they’d tried to live together but ended up apart after bad luck in the room lottery, but that was no one’s fault. This one was all Steve.

Falsworth sticks his head out the window and calls to Sam: "Hey, we're gonna get everybody together to go to Phi Kap."

"Cool!" Sam calls back. He stands up, dusts himself off, and offers Steve a hand. Steve lets himself be pulled up. "We're taking those girls to this party some of them are supposed to be at already. You want to come? The drinks will be better, it'll have that going for it at least."

"I don't think so, thanks though," Steve says, feeling the gratitude an embarrassing amount. But also, he knows that even if Bucky is going to this frat party, he doesn't want to.

Nice to know that he has that limit.

Inside, the rugby guys reunited with their dates are in the front hallway, taking up way too much space. All of them, including every single girl, yell at Steve to come with them when he walks up with Sam. Steve laughs and turns them down, charmed by their easy friendship.

Bucky isn't with them when they file out the door back into the night like a roving band of merry-makers, so Steve wanders back through the hall, looking around for him. He’s not in the kitchen, but Clint is, running the tap over a cut on his hand. “What happened?” Steve asks.

Clint looks down at his hand, wry. “I jumped up to hit that hanging sign in front of the gas station, you know the one? But there was like, a jagged piece of metal sticking out of it.”

“Shit. Do you need a tetanus shot?”

“Hope not... I just got one a month ago when I stepped on that nail...”

Steve shrugs. “I think you’re good if you’ve had one.”

“Yeah? Cool.” Clint dries his hand with a paper towel, blood seeping into the white surface of it. He opens his palm and they look at it: a gash the size of a quarter in the heel of his hand. “Kind of took a chunk of me with it.”

Steve grimaces sympathetically. “Have you seen Bucky?”

“In that room a few minutes ago,” Clint says, pointing to the last room on this floor, at the end of the hall where Steve hasn’t been yet.

The door’s open. There’s a group watching YouTube videos and cracking up on the bed, and nearby in a chair is Bucky. It takes Steve a second to process the scene, and he turns away as soon as he does: Maria, Natasha’s friend from earlier, is sitting on Bucky’s lap, their heads close together.

There’s a crashing thing inside of Steve, breaking apart behind his ribs.

Fine. If that’s what Bucky wants to do, it’s fine, but Steve has to... he can’t stay at this party.

He’s a complete coward and also a child and he can hate himself for it later.

 

+

 

The quiet of the street is a relief. The wind all through the tree branches walks him home, familiar and sad and lovely. Plenty of people are out, pairs and small groups of them, mostly drunk, bouncing to the next party, bundling up and wrapping arms around themselves and each other against the cold. A few walk right past Steve, but he’s miles away from them.

He means to go to bed as soon as he gets back; collapse into it and not brush his teeth or take out his contacts. When he pulls open his door, though, there are sounds from Brock’s side of the room—two people, muffled curses at his entrance, flashes of skin. Steve says “Sorry!” and pulls the door closed once again, stranded in the hallway.

He winces. Jesus.

Brock is used to having the room to himself on the weekends because Steve is never here. He didn’t even think to tell him he’d be around this time. Brock’s okay, as a roommate, but they’re not friends and they only talk the bare minimum required amount to function in the same small space.

Defeated, Steve makes his way to the floor’s lounge. The lights are off and he doesn’t turn them on. There’s a TV in here, but he doesn’t want to watch anything. He sits at one of the windows, knees pulled up to his chest on the window seat and side pressed against the glass. In the hallway, a few people pass the door, talking and laughing, but they don’t come in.

Steve looks out at the field between this dorm and the neighboring one, the gentle sweep of the path coming down from the hill where Steve walked a few minutes before. Only a few of the lights are on in the other dorm. It’s late; people are asleep or out.

Leaves blow across the sidewalk below; they lift up and spin out. He can hear the wind against the window, even feel it shake with it slightly sometimes. Steve wonders how long Brock will be.

He wonders if Bucky and Maria are hooking up.

He’s got less than no right to wonder it, but he does anyway.

It’s only a few minutes later, not nearly long enough that he’s considered going to put his ear to his and Brock’s door and check, when he sees the shape of a boy appear over the crest of the hill and cross down the path. Bucky’s got his hands shoved in his pockets and his head down, but Steve could pick him out of a group of clones of himself, at this point, that’s how exactly his stupid, traitorous brain is tuned to Bucky. He’s walking fast and he’s out of sight underneath, entering the building, now. Going home.

Steve’s already run away once tonight, now he’s going to be brave. He stands from the window and squares his shoulders, gives himself fifteen seconds to pace around and run his fingers through his hair and say, “Fuck. Okay, okay, I can do this. Fuck.” And then he goes to Bucky’s room.

It’s not Bucky who opens on his knock, but Gabe, and over the couch back Steve can see Gabe’s date, blonde hair still pinned up from the formal, also looking at him expectantly. “Oh,” Steve says, “Hi? Is Bucky here?”

Gabe stands aside to let him in. “Yeah, go on back, he just walked in,” Gabe says, already returning to the couch.

Steve doesn’t actually know where Bucky’s room is in the suite, but it doesn’t matter, because Bucky appears around the corner at that point and they both freeze. Gabe clears his throat from the couch and Bucky says, “All right, all right,” and then to Steve: “Here,” and leads him back.

He motions Steve into his bedroom and shuts the door behind them. It’s tiny, the walls crammed totally full with just a bed and a desk and dresser, but it looks comfortable. “Sorry about him,” Bucky says about Gabe, standing between the bed and chair and not sitting on either. He’s taken off his jacket and shoes already, a minute ago when he first came in before Steve arrived, and he looks smaller and vulnerable in stocking feet and a flannel.

“Nah, I’m sorry to just show up,” Steve says. “Probably should’ve texted first.”

“I don’t mind,” Bucky says. He looks tired but Steve still thinks it’s true. “What’s up, though?”

“I saw you walking back. I was... Brock—my roommate—has a girl in our room so I was just sitting in the common room waiting it out.” It’s true, but Steve still feels like a huge liar for saying such a small fraction of what’s true.

Bucky nods uncertainly. “Okay. So... you want to wait here?” Bucky’s off-balance, not taking the lead like he usually does. Not sure about something. “You could probably sleep in Jim’s room, I know he’s staying at Amy’s.”

“I can go back in a little bit, I think. Do you want to hang out?” Steve asks. It feels weird in his mouth because it’s the first time he’s asked Bucky to do something instead of the other way around. “Unless you’re going to bed, I know it’s late.”

Bucky looks at his bed like he doesn’t remember if he was or not. He shrugs. “Okay. Sure. Do... you want to just watch Netflix?”

“Yeah,” Steve nods, grateful. He really does, he wants that a lot.

Bucky flips open the laptop on his desk and types, then clicks a few things. "Movie or TV?" he asks, voice muffled where he's leaning his face against one hand.

"TV," Steve says. While Bucky's turned, he's free to look around the room as much as he wants. There's a pile of gym bags and sports stuff in one corner, a soccer ball and several pairs of sneakers. On the walls are mostly pictures of his friends: him and his roommates, arms around each other's shoulders, in wrestling gear; him and Nat posing with their heads through the face holes of cardboard cutouts of dinosaurs; Bucky several years younger on a roof with the New York skyline behind him. A pile of clothes spills out of the closet but the bed is made.

Bucky takes the laptop over to the bed and sets it near the foot, climbing up toward the headboard and making space for Steve. Bucky pulls the pillows vertical and sets them against the headboard so they have somewhere to sit.

Steve unlaces his boots and slides them off quickly; throws his jacket over the back of the chair and climbs up on to the bed too. He reaches back to arrange his pillow, and he feels a weird surge of protectiveness for the white cotton pillowcase. Like he shouldn’t touch it; it’s too personal, too _Bucky’s_.

Steve shimmies down the bed slightly so he can dig his wallet out of his back pocket and drop it on the desk. The change clinks as it thwaps against the wood. He gets situated again as Bucky leans forward and hits play, the opening music starting. "X-Files?" Steve asks.

Bucky starts laughing, the bed moving with it. "Yeah, kind of weird I guess, right? Have you watched it, or do you like it?" It breaks some of the tension, him bursting out laughing at himself.

"Sure," Steve says. "I've seen most of it. It used to be on late at night on... some channel we got."

"Yeah," Bucky's nodding, "at like eleven, in high school."

"Yeah, exactly." They've got their legs stretched out in front of them, the bed too narrow to both sit cross-legged.

"Can you reach the light?" Bucky asks.

Steve cranes off the bed and just barely gets it without having to stand up. In just the glow of the laptop screen the room feels like any other room Steve's sat in watching a computer throughout his life; he could be at home in his bedroom in Brooklyn. Bucky too, cast in shadow and eerie screen light, could be anyone. He seems real and touchable in a way he hasn't before this. Steve wants to know why Bucky left the party but if Bucky isn't asking him the same thing, he's not going to push it either.

The wind shakes the window a little in here, too, even against the heavy industrial school panes.

Steve's jumpy, nervous at how well this dumb night worked out and way too aware of the space between his body and Bucky's. It's a bureaucratic episode of X-Files from maybe season four, not an especially scary one, which Steve takes to mean Bucky just played the show from wherever he left off last time. "Is this what you would've done if I didn't come over?" Steve asks him.

Bucky doesn't look over and neither does Steve. "Yeah, probably," he says after a beat.

They fall quiet again, the show filling the air, until Bucky exhales a sound like the beginning of a laugh, like this is all a lot to take in. “You’re weird, you know?” he says, not unkindly. “If you were anybody else, you would’ve come over to hook up.”

Steve flexes his hands in his lap. “I’m not that weird,” he says after a minute, and then he feels Bucky’s eyes on him. When he looks up, Bucky’s looking at him steady, seriously. All the air goes out of the room, tips over into nothing but electric current, thick around them, like it’s just been waiting to do it this whole time.

Bucky moves his hand from his own leg to Steve’s, and Steve tangles his fingers in Bucky’s. When he squeezes Bucky’s hand, way too tight with how terrified he is and how much he wants to touch him, Bucky leans forward and nuzzles his nose next to Steve’s (still a little cold from outside), asking: _Kiss me, if you want us to kiss._ It’s so gentle that Steve’s eyes drift closed at the touch like he’s been drugged.

So Steve kisses him, tilts his face just barely and presses his lips to Bucky’s. He’s got Bucky’s hand in a death grip but their lips are barely, barely touching, because it’s already so much. It hooks him below his stomach, fills his throat with an ache. Bucky's hand slips across Steve's neck, so light, fingertips into the soft flesh of his earlobe—Steve rolls his forehead into Bucky's temple, nose pressed to his cheek, and breathes raggedly next to Bucky's mouth.

"Steve," Bucky breathes, something heartbreaking in it, his hand clenching into the fabric of Steve's shirt, like he's checking that Steve is really there.

"Yeah," Steve says. "Yeah. Hey." He needs to touch Bucky's skin so he finds the warm, smooth expanse of Bucky's back under his t-shirt and traces a palm over it. Pulls Bucky closer with it.

Bucky kisses him again, frantic, pulls Steve practically into his lap. They move with purpose, fast and demanding, against each other, but without much of a plan except to grab every available part and get it closer. Steve finds the zipper of Bucky's hoodie between them and pulls it down, even gets it open, but he can't get it off and Bucky's grabbing at his shirt, too—he pulls back from Steve, says, "Here," and yanks off his own hoodie. Steve gets the idea; he sits up, unbuttons his own shirt messily and tosses it to the floor, strips off his t-shirt, too, while Bucky does the same. And it just seems like the best chance, so Steve stands up hurriedly and unzips his jeans before he can think too much about it. Bucky watches, eyes big, but he doesn't waste much time either.

While Steve is stepping out of the legs of his pants Bucky slams the laptop shut and shoves it underneath the bed. He flops back down and lifts his hips to peel off his jeans, too, kicking them free when Steve crawls back onto the bed. One of Steve's socks came off with his jeans so he drops the other one to the floor and Bucky follows him: they're down to underwear, like mutually losing at strip poker.

There's an uncertain moment: they're both poised but it seems too bare to dive back in. "Here," Bucky says again, always leading Steve. He pulls back the covers and they climb under. He's right, it's better, easier there. They move toward each other like magnets, slotting their bodies together. Steve strokes a hand in Bucky's hair, fits it around the curve of his skull. Their legs knit together. The heat off Bucky's thighs and groin is overwhelming, Steve feels like his whole body is sinking into it.

And then Bucky wraps an arm around Steve and pulls him in and they kiss again, messy and big, and that's it. There's no going back, this is going to happen. Steve shifts his hips forward and up, against him, and Bucky makes a sound in his throat that Steve feels vibrate through his mouth.

Bucky drops a hand to Steve's lower back, then under his shorts, to take the meat of Steve's ass in his palm and pull him closer. The hard, hot line of Bucky through his shorts is a thrill, and Steve chases it. It’s getting sweaty and close between them—they're shoving their hips against each other, increasingly in time, to a rhythm, and it's _so_ good and not enough—

"Here," Steve says this time, on a gasp as he pulls back as little as possible from Bucky's mouth, because he wants to give Bucky something now. He gets a hand in the waistband of Bucky's boxer-briefs and pulls the side of them that he can reach down. Bucky shifts and helps him, lifts to yank the other side off. They catch on his dick, heavy against his stomach, and because Steve hadn't touched it with his hands yet it he feels a twinge of blushy embarrassment at it.

Steve pushes the covers down halfway, and follows them there to where he’s pulled off Bucky’s underwear. He pushes them the rest of the way down from Bucky’s knees, under the covers, and untangles them from Bucky’s feet and drops them to the ground. It’s an afterthought or a side note to what he’s really doing, which is spanning his hand across Bucky’s hip and nosing into the place where his leg meets his body. Bucky’s breaths are high and some of them sound like Steve’s name. He’s got a hand in Steve’s hair, tight and pulling like he’s not sure if he wants to pull Steve back up or keep him there forever.

Steve hasn’t done anything yet, just breathed hot over Bucky’s skin, when Bucky's grip on Steve's hair changes, turns edgy in a real way. Steve backs off and looks up at him, Bucky braced on one elbow like he wants to do something. Bucky tries to say something but it doesn't come out.

"It's okay," Steve says, shaking his head. Anything is okay, it doesn’t matter, if he's not ready they can just keep making out.

Before he can get up Bucky stops him: "No, keep going, keep going." His hand on Steve's face, warm, maybe shaking a little, a thumb over his lip.

Steve can't read him. He's on edge, desperate, but is it because he's worked up or because he's freaked out? Steve nods at him and watches Bucky's eyes while he nods back. He's hard and pressing forward to feel something again, so Steve leans in and takes the head of Bucky's dick into his mouth. He presses his tongue to the shape of it, where Bucky is smooth and heavy, and gets it wet; sucks on it some and moves his lips down just a little to take more of it into his mouth.

Bucky's on his side and curled toward Steve, around the hot center of him where Steve's head is working. Steve doesn't know where to touch him. He has the idea he shouldn't get his fingers between Bucky's legs, or even around his dick while it's in his mouth, in case it's too much after how Bucky reacted to the blowjob at first. He wraps a hand around the inside of Bucky's thigh, where the skin is thin and covered in soft dark hair, and Steve can feel all the huge muscles working underneath. He takes a handful of leg, and Bucky says, "Ahh." When Steve flicks his eyes up, Bucky's eyes are squeezed shut, his mouth open in an O.

Steve takes him in all the way, the head of his dick at the back of Steve's throat and all of it dripping wet, laying across Steve’s tongue, and then he pulls most of the way off.

He speeds up, the motions shorter, just the tip flashing into his mouth again and again, hollowing his cheeks and pressing every interior surface of his mouth that isn't teeth against as much of Bucky as he can.

"Jesus, fuck," Bucky says in a new voice, "I'm getting close, here, come back up—"

Steve does; he'd do anything Bucky told him to while he sounds like this. Or probably while he sounds _any_ way.

Steve kisses him rough and frantic, pulling him back in and tangling their legs up so they're locked together and rocking into each other. Bucky is close, pressing hard and deep against Steve's thigh, but when he realizes the fabric of Steve's boxer briefs is there he manages to rip them down Steve's hips enough that they're not between them anymore.

Skin to skin, they don't last long.

The air in Bucky’s small room is thick with breath and sweat. Steve touches him everywhere he can get his hands: over the curve of his ass, along his arms, in the dip of his spine, in the spokes of his ribs.

Steve’s about to come, it’s building sweet and needy at the center of him. If the lights were on, he’d be able to see the flush of Bucky’s cheeks, the exact color of his lips smeared with kisses. Because it’s dark, he tries to touch and listen as much as he can instead. Saving it.

In case this is the only time.

Bucky tucks his head down against Steve’s neck and holds on to him; makes a few desperate sounds and breathes out “Oh,” as he spills hotly over Steve’s hip and stomach.

Something unspools in Steve when Bucky comes, and he lets go of something he didn't know he was holding on to. He thrusts only once, twice, already on the precarious edge of it, and comes in waves, following Bucky, holding him close and pressing his nose into Bucky’s cheek. He wraps a hand around the back of Bucky’s neck, where he’s damp with sweat.

They lie together breathing in time, Steve massaging his fingers through Bucky’s hair, limp now. Bucky’s gone pliable and shivery, cuddling up close and hugging Steve like he’s afraid to let him go.

It surprises Steve when he sits up without warning, leaning over Steve and grabbing a t-shirt off the floor. He uses it to wipe the worst of the sticky mess off of Steve, and then himself. He tosses the shirt back down, and Steve just bites his lip and watches while Bucky, heavy-lidded, shifts around and pulls the covers back up to their chests, burrowing back into Steve when he’s done like he doesn’t even mind all the sharp bits of Steve’s body that are sticking into him.

He didn’t expect Bucky to be like this, so quiet and fragile. It makes him want to tuck him in and keep him safe there forever.

They don't talk for a long time. Just the wind screaming to get in and gentle breaths.

Steve’s far from sleep, though, and Bucky’s awake too. There is something unbearably sad filling Steve’s throat, like... like this wasn’t good enough.

This didn’t fix it.

He’s not _over_ Bucky now. It’s way worse.

He has to be brave again and say something, ask, make this okay. But he’s got no reserves of strength left, it’s all sweated out into Bucky’s sheets, licked onto Bucky’s skin, shot onto Bucky’s stomach.

So he turns to him and hugs him close in a way that isn’t offering comfort but asking for something. Bucky holds him in return, but he keeps trying to pull Bucky closer and then Bucky touches him in a different way: stroking Steve’s hair, kissing his cheek, his eyelids, trying to cover as much of Steve’s exposed skin with his body as he can.

“It’s okay,” Bucky says, kissing right below his ear. “It’s okay.”

Steve knows what it feels like to get hit, and the urge to cry right then is a _punch_. He lets Bucky kiss him until it passes.

Bucky shifts back so they can look at each other, lying facing each other on their pillows, knees touching under the covers and holding hands because that’s the last place Bucky trailed off touching him and Steve held onto him there.

“Do you... want to watch X-Files?” Bucky offers, his voice rough from before but tinged with a joke, like he knows it’s dumb. He smiles a little at Steve, offers it to him.

“Yeah. Totally.” Steve smiles back.

Bucky turns his face into his pillow, gathering himself for something, then watches Steve and says, “I was going to say. When we were... when you were about to go down on me?”

Steve’s nodding. That moment when Bucky almost pulled back.

“I’ve never done this with a boy before,” Bucky says, and Steve feels his mouth shape an _Oh_ he doesn’t say. “And I just wanted to tell you.”

 _I like you_ , Steve nearly confesses aloud. Just manages to stop himself. Instead he squeezes Bucky’s hand under the covers, says, “Yeah? Well, I dunno if I was the best person to show you the ropes.” His voice is sarcastic with the understatement, inviting Bucky to smile at the joke too. Instead a cloud passes over Bucky’s face. “But I’m glad I got to do it, anyway,” Steve adds softly, without irony, and it takes something permanent from him to say it straight out like that.

Bucky eases, eyes going soft and washing over Steve’s face, fond. “I’m _dead_. Let’s go to sleep,” he says.

Steve looks at the ceiling. “I should probably go back up,” he says.

Bucky shrugs, snuggling down into the bed, eyes already fluttering closed. “Would suck to get up there and find out they’re still doing it,” he says, and yawns.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “You don’t mind if I stay?” He hasn’t moved to get up at all during this exchange so it’s probably not super convincing.

“No,” Bucky says flatly. “I don’t mind.”

They shift around a little, getting comfortable. Mostly Steve edges closer to the warmth of Bucky’s body. It’s cold if they’re not near, naked as they are. They fall asleep facing each other, mirrors of the same loose shape.

An earthquake of sound breaks most of the way through Steve’s sleep at some point in the night, disorienting: people coming into the suite, laughing, voices thrown loud. It goes on, talking, rumbling, and then they separate, doors closing, the hall light switching off in the crack under Bucky’s door.

Bucky is sleep-warm, roused by the sound and by Steve turning over. He pulls Steve in, up against his chest, arm draped around his middle, and hugs him unconsciously. The cozy weight of him is so nice, it nearly breaks Steve’s heart. He falls back to sleep anyway.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @ okaynowkiss on tumblr
> 
> As is probably apparent, this story is left very open to continuation. I'm a bad planner and a lot of my ideas just didn't make it in by the time I had to wrap this up and get it ready for posting. So I can't promise there will be more, but my intention is to continue this in future stories, since I've already written some additional scenes. I do hope this functions as a reasonably complete thing that can be read alone, though.


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